Disturbing, but not compelling.
Garner (Nightdancing, 2003) returns with the tale of a mysterious, talented boy living in 19th-century England.
The night Edgar Jones is born, a meteor shower lights up the skies above Oxford University. His father William dotes on him, while his mother Eleanor worries about the innate wildness she sees in her only child. The author can’t seem to decide on a protagonist, leaving readers without intimate knowledge of or empathy for any one of the Joneses. Curious, precocious and determined, Edgar takes on an almost devilish quality as he grows up, parlaying an apprenticeship at an iron forge into a position at the university, where his father works as a night watchman. The professor who shepherds him into Oxford has dubious intentions, but Edgar falls in love with the ironwork involved in creating the professor’s pet project, a museum of natural history. Meanwhile, Eleanor, feeling isolated from her husband and son, starts a sewing business with the help of a benefactress. As the business becomes profitable, she acquires a new sense of independence, though the trials Edgar’s mischief brings her, as well as her relationship with an increasingly angry and erratic husband, are endless sources of angst. Garner doesn’t fully explore the motivations of her characters, who seem like caricatures. Edgar is certainly bizarre, but he is neither interesting nor likable. He is not scary enough to frighten, clever enough to admire or kind enough to champion. Choosing iron as the source of his inspiration poses a brave challenge, but the theme is painfully over-romanticized, and the fantastical elements require too much suspension of belief, especially at the end. Striving for attractively old-fashioned lyricism, the prose seems instead fabricated and childish. There are some thrilling scenes as the plot twists nicely toward the finale, but by then most readers are unlikely to care much anymore.
Disturbing, but not compelling.Pub Date: May 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-307-40899-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2009
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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